But inconvenience is directly tied to cost.
If it cost $1 to go from Providence to Boston, a lot of people would decide the inconvenience is worth it.
Regional Rail (RUR) & North-South Rail Link (NSRL)
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But inconvenience is directly tied to cost.
If it cost $1 to go from Providence to Boston, a lot of people would decide the inconvenience is worth it.
I like the quote from Poftak at the end of this. ""These locomotives will be crucial to improving daily reliability and allow us to operate the system while we plan for the future of commuter rail," said Poftak.
https://www.progressiverailroading....-new-station-more-locomotive-overhauls--57457
It makes it sound like they're seriously looking at electrification, even when overhauling existing diesel locomotives.
https://www.progressiverailroading....-new-station-more-locomotive-overhauls--57457
It makes it sound like they're seriously looking at electrification, even when overhauling existing diesel locomotives.
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There will never, ever be a surplus of diesel locos on the system. RER frequency increases alone require an order-of-magnitude's fleet expansion. They can buy a swank EMU fleet for Providence + Fairmount + RIDOT intrastate + Riverside/Worcester and flip two-thirds of the southside fleet to electric...and STILL need every F40 rebuild on-hand for the entirety of their rated extended lifespan. Simply because the northside will be that hungry for power.
HelloBostonHi
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Yeah during the FMCB meeting it was brought up that this contract should not and does not preclude a future electrification, in fact it provides what they called a good stepping stone into it. They say they expect 15-20 years of life from these overhauled locos vs more for new ones, but thats what they wanted, they think that provides them with a good buffer time to determine new options and procure them. Because as much as I want EMU RR tomorrow, design and procurement always has and always will take years and at least a partial diesel fleet will be necessary for some time to come.
Providence and Fairmount are the first lines i'd electrify. From there i'd go by ridership, so do the Nbyprt/Rckprt and Worcester lines next. For those lines it might make more sense to electrify the inner sections first, providing subway like service inside of Framingham and Beverly Station while using less frequent diesel trains for express service from locations further out.
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Northside is going to be brutal-hard because of the up-front costs of implanting electrification at the terminal. That may need a major not-fake NSRL catalyst to get jump-started.
In the meantime, sequence should ideally go by number of substations required to get a particular line completely electrified. 25 kV subs need to be placed roughly every 30 miles. And also exactly how much diesel equipment requirements each electrification chunk displaces, because we want to run up the score on scalability before we find ourselves in a place where we're stamping out residuals, low-ridership branches, etc. So with that in mind, on southside:
1. Providence / Fairmount / Riverside. 0 new subs, 1 upgraded existing sub. MAXIMUM service levels you can string together by expanding existing Sharon substation (which feeds the terminal district) to its fullest pre-provisioned capacity. RIDOT intrastate is on its own existing sub.
2. Worcester. 1-2 subs...depending on whether the break between electrical sections stays at Riverside or reverts back to Beacon Park to give some capacity back to the terminal district for future slack (i.e. what was once Allston-Newton capacity gets reassigned to Dorchester-Braintree for when the Old Colony gets electrified). 2nd sub's cost justified by virtue of finishing the job to Worcester started by getting out as far as Riverside.
3@. Needham RAPID TRANSIT CONVERSION. Settle up for service equitability's sake because next-highest priority, but we know already this one is a waste of resources to do at 25 kV AC commuter rail when the line's future is 600 V DC attached to Orange & Green.
*****^^These 3^^ are enough to displace two-thirds of the southside equipment requirements to electric.*****
4. Franklin/Foxboro. 1 sub on the Framingham Secondary in Walpole is enough to do Readville-Walpole, Walpole-Forge Park, Walpole-Mansfield (interconnect to NEC even if no trains except game-day specials from Providence will use the Mansfield end because it's electrically beneficial for system robustness). Additional sub *may* or may not be necessary for Franklin end in future if line ever extended to Milford and/or Woonsocket...TBD.
*****...and ^^this^^ pushes diesel vs. electric ratios on southside to >70%. All else from here can be considered flipping residuals.*****
Old Colony is a no-go until you fix the Dorchester-Quincy capacity pinch, and each of the 3 branches will require subs so you may as well knock off the other mains with fewer branches first. Cape Cod probably shouldn't be electrified at all even if year-round commuter service re-extends back to Hyannis. Max service levels there only merit peak/off-peak (with extreme-sparse off-peak) and seasonal service...not RER. Draw the line at Buzzards Bay for furthest extent of the wires.
Stoughton a no-go until there's clarity on what the hell is happening with South Coast Rail, because substation placement depends on how far it is/isn't extending past Stoughton. It projects a ludicrously costly 3 subs to get the Taunton main + each of the two branches electrified...and honestly, if they don't challenge the Army Corp's single-track kneecapping through the swamp so the whole mess isn't defective-by-design on capacity, the service levels are too broken to merit it. In fact, the Corps' electrification requirement only exists to cover up how badly they broke the train meets with the single-track requirement, so the state has to appeal both the single-track swamp trestle AND the diesel ban in order to net an un-broken enough service levels to even merit electrification (yes, that seeming contradiction--fight the wires to do the wires--makes complete sense in-context).
No effing way SCR Phase I , the jokiest-of-joke service levels imaginable, gets a single inch of wire. You've got the Old Colony dependency and such serious ridership viability questions with the horrible travel times that it would be lighting money on fire. Phase II via Stoughton a minimum requirement for doing wires, and even there it's not truly going to justify its cost unless they fix the single-tracking brokenness on the Taunton main.
No on Grand Junction. Need the northside terminal district to be implanted with electrification in order to make any use of it on the connector, and that's a whole lot bigger an ordeal planning-wise. Southside electrics aren't going to be serviced at BET anyway, so won't ever need to roll north in non-revenue service either.
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See, this is what's bonkers to me. What's gonna be done on the Providence Line north of Canton Junction if you don't electrify the Stoughton Branch right away? Just keep co-mingling diesel push-pulls with EMUs and Amtrak? Won't that kneecap the frequencies north of there? At that point, why bother?
Or is the alternative to run a Princeton-style diesel dinky back and forth between Stoughton and Canton Junction with timed transfers? I'm sure that'll be popular (said sarcastically).
Besides, splitting electrified services at Canton Junction makes sense. It basically gives you a pre-built infrastructure to support short-turns for Urban Rail, without needing to gum up the environmentally sensitive areas around Route 128/University Park for an extra track. (Which, yeah, eventually will need to come with future Amtrak service, but that's a ways off.)
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It's not going to kneecap frequencies at all. For one, the Needham Line is a much bigger toilet clog on the SW Corridor than any other branch schedule. Two, the Franklin Line mucks things up much more than Stoughton when it has to cross over to get in position to turn out at Readville; they've already proposed interlining it via Fairmount to get it off the NEC. Three, Track 4 being reinstated from Green St. to Readville will do a lot to loosen things up. Four, Hyde Park--mainly a Providence/Stoughton stop--can or will be closed if Fairmount Station gets a frequency bump, meaning that in tandem with Franklin's removal everything will be single-file from Forest Hills to 128.
Finally, diesels reach exactly the same top and cruising speed as EMU's. Acceleration is poorer, but the difference is minimized when a line has wide stop spacing (like the NEC) and the trains are reasonable length and run often enough that they don't have to be sardine-packed with 6 bi-level cars of weighted-down human flesh. EMU's being able to maintain their acceleration profile under all levels of load is where you can plot a faster schedule by stripping out some of the excess cushion for variable dwells. That matters for packing the schedule. And there are numerous other things that make them more resource-efficient and flexible for the job. But the only place where a diesel is going to get caught straight-up lagging on the NEC is coming out of the station stop at Ruggles...and, still, Needham > Franklin > Stoughton on that worry list. Once you clear Forest Hills and start on the straightaway the travel time to 128 and Canton is not much different vehicle-to-vehicle.
I think we're severely overestimating the size of the performance difference here. Diesels have all kinds of if's and but's for efficiency vs. service density, but they can most definitely haul ass between stops.
Don't joke...they might actually float that one as a lead trial balloon. For Needham, not Stoughton, because Needham is where RER frequencies are impossible with the SW Corridor infrastructure.
It's unlikely there's going to be any Urban Rail short-turns that way. The need to re-engage Amtrak dispatch at Readville is going to hiccup a few too many Fairmount frequencies. I know they're evaluating that in the Rail Vision study, but they stand a much better chance doing it at Dedham Corporate instead of Westwood because the unified T dispatch ensures there won't be chance pauses to cushion around. Westwood turns are more an NSRL thing (i.e. why the station has slack space to eventually build out to 5-6 platform tracks).
They need the extra track @ 128 anyway. One of the most facepalming mistakes South Coast FAIL made was not speccing any changes whatsoever to the NEC layout, despite knowing they couldn't get enough trains cleanly out there to do a schedule that was worth a damn and knowing that the NEC FUTURE study would be offering up some grist for expanding track capacity.
128's two platforms can each be turned into 2-track islands for 4 total platform tracks. The ROW through Neponset Reservation is already graded for extending quad-track between the Readville freight yard leads and 128 and already has its catenary supports spaced for quad; it only needs drainage fortifications at the edges of the grading to pass muster with the EIS. Between Dedham St. and Canton Jct. it's 2-track framed by rock embankment, so won't be expandable until Amtrak chucks in some serious $$$ for their further-future needs. But Canton Jct. station itself, currently a bottleneck because of the way the Stoughton platform overspills the junction and the lack of passing options on the NEC side, is silly-easy to fix. Shift the Stoughton inbound platform behind the depot building, and take 1 parking row on the NEC southbound side to shift the platform back and add a third track before the Viaduct so Amtrak can pass a stopped Providence train (there's even remnants of a 3rd maintenance-of-way track on that side in the parking lot).
Have the contiguous 4 tracks from Green St. to past 128, separation of CR and high-speed traffic at 128, and sorting opportunities at 128 and Canton Jct. stations and there should be no traffic bottlenecks affecting an RER schedule being sent to Stoughton/Taunton/beyond. And certainly no reason to worry that one last diesel schedule amidst a sea of electrics is somehow going to send everything to a screeching halt.
Do you see now why you fix the capacity ceiling BEFORE making go/no-go decision on electrifying Stoughton? Target fixation on wires means there's no attention being put to the kind of common-sense things that would actually ensure workable schedules. SCR got broken by the Army Corps single-tracking the swamp...they made the BS electrification requirement to try to cover up that colossal cock-up...and the Phase II house of cards has all its credibility staked to electric-or-bust so everyone forgot about the NEC. EASY stuff on the NEC. Like...I doubt the Neponset Reservation is even going to be that hard to permit given the grading they have to work with.
Also...keep in mind, if you are so gung-ho to electrify Stoughton now that means you CAN'T electrify Riverside now. Sharon sub does not have enough slack capacity. Which line is going to see more frequent service and move more people? Urban Rail to Riverside, hands-down; Stoughton is out-of-range for the intra-128 services. Further, when you do build SCR Phase II the sub that handles the mainline to Taunton is going to need to get placed somewhere around Route 106 in Easton...where the same set of huge high-voltage lines that supply Sharon sub cross the Stoughton ROW. You do not want to predicate your electrical buildout today on a line terminus in Stoughton without knowing if it's ever going to get extended to Taunton...because you'll have completely wasted money and effort on transmission infrastructure elsewhere that will have to be re-sectioned in the future. Again, see Riverside and throwing away an easy-grab opportunity for denser service.
Stoughton is the wrong place to be getting OCD. Think service levels, service levels, service levels on where most bang-for-buck is going to get apportioned on the initial investment. Emphasis on "initial"; you can always tend to it later with or without SCR. But as far as Sharon sub is concerned we need that very first electric investment to pack the absolute most frequent possible service you can cram onto it. Stoughton ain't it. Not like Riverside is.
TallIsGood
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What happens with the Viaduct in Canton? Always a two track setup?
I could see some pushback on this. As it is, Hyde Park is much faster to South Station and also hits two other big job centers (Back Bay and Ruggles/LMA)
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2 tracks only for 1500 ft. or so on the Viaduct-proper. 3+ tracks will pick right back up on the south end of it where the substation is, so the Viaduct itself is no constraint. Having the passer through the NEC-side station is where they address the pinch.
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But is it really a station if nothing uses it? Franklin hardly stops there at all today, and if that's going to be interlined with Fairmount it has no future chance of picking up HP. South Coast Rail's brokenness calls for Stoughton trains to start skipping all stops between Canton Junction and Back Bay, which is unacceptable on its face and also unnecessary if the 128 + CJ upgrades discussed earlier were done. But if 128 is the first priority to get back on that schedule and Ruggles is the next priority...then HP is probably still a deletion. Which leaves just *some* Providence trains--and a lot fewer than today--stopping there. That BBY/Ruggles access doesn't amount to a hill of beans if those are the future frequencies even in an RER universe.
Further, the projected design for a 4-track rebuild of that station has it squished way over to the westerly side of the ROW on an island platform reaching 2 tracks only (i.e. same as Forest Hills), meaning it's only going to be appropriate for the Franklin trains who'll be no longer using the NEC in the first place...with the crossover games required for any northbounds limiting any additional Providence pickups. It'll be even more useless than today in its rebuilt form.
If the neighborhood's going to push back at anything, it's the further reductions in service coming...but there are no good solves for that one. Once the service levels decline to uselessness and Fairmount right down the street gets some bus-looping recalibration of the Cleary Square routes matched to its sharply-increased service, there's really nothing left to fight for because the migration plan down the street ends up where all their frequencies for getting anywhere go. It'll no longer be a choice between most-convenient stop, because HP being nearly zeroed-out of slots means those direct Ruggles/LMA rides will be too few and far between to begin with. By the time Track 4 comes back it'll be too expensive to try to rebuild what at that point will be--with or without RER--one of the most service-useless stations on the entire system.
HenryAlan
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I agree. It has high ridership for the trains that stop there, which is a pretty strong indication that people prefer it over Fairmont.
Wow, that's awkward. So just three stops before Back Bay?
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Way worse than that. From the Stoughton Alternative DEIR. . .
- Both branches skip Ruggles, Hyde Park, 128 at all times. No one South Coast will have jobs access to/from the 128 belt and the South Coast. Economically, that's one of the nastiest little buried ledes in the whole scheme.
- Fall River Branch at all peak hours runs express from North Easton to Freetown. Therefore, Canton Jct., Canton Center, Stoughton, and North Easton are served...but Fall River passengers will always skip Easton Village, Raynham, Downtown Taunton, and Taunton Depot on any 9-5'er slot.
- New Bedford Branch at all peak hours runs express from the NEC to North Easton. North Easton, Easton Village, Raynham, Downtown Taunton, and Taunton Depot are served...but New Bedford passengers will always skip Canton Junction, Canton Center, and Stoughton on any 9-5'er slot. The train will literally not stop anywhere on the 20 miles from Back Bay to North Easton, and Stoughton riders will see outright peak-period frequency reductions from today.
- Off-peak both branches make all Stoughton mainline stops, but still skip between Ruggles, Hyde Park, and 128. Astoundingly, though, the off-peak schedule is only 2 minutes longer than the peak schedule on each branch despite making 3-4 more stops. Gigantic cushion is packed into the peak schedule to allow for long 5+ minute pauses at station stops for train meets, because the margins for error are too small to keep 2 branches of traffic from gridlocking itself. Therefore, a New Bedford train may be sitting stopped at Raynham for an eternally long time in the A.M. waiting for the Fall River train to leapfrog it expressing through the opposite platform.
- The dwell penalty equal or greater to the diesel vs. electric penalty, which totals 3-5 minutes for the same schedules. The electrification requirement only exists because the DEIR ran out of room to stage the train meets...so they made up some whooey about the swamp and buried the lede on the "schedule adjustment" pauses.
None of this would be necessary if the state challenged the Army Corps' utterly baseless requirement for a single-track swamp trestle instead of the pre-existing double-track embankment...on grounds that a similar wetlands embankment in Scituate abandoned the very same year (1960) and passing through an even more environmentally sensitive estuary had no problem getting a permit for re-use when Greenbush was restored. And also on grounds that accounting of pollutant runoff reductions from MA 24 and (even worse offender) I-495 into the swamp by virtue of building the line.
And none of this would be necessary if the SCR Task Force's pathologically arse-end-up build focus put any attention as first priority on how the trains were actually going to get out of Boston before overpromising candy to the South Coast cities. The lack of attention paid to the NEC and some of the common-sense upgrades that would've solved the major inner bottlenecks and prevented this sad skip-stopping is a scandal unto itself. It's still going to be hard to get RER service levels to the South Coast cities when they're situated on branches-of-a-branch...but the cities could still net eminently functional hour-or-better frequencies while the mainline to Taunton goes flush with regulation RER levels. But only if they fight that bullshit DEIR like they mean it, and only if NEC capacity expansion Forest Hills-Canton Jct. gets treated like the project prereq it truly is.
The most infuriating part of the project is just how senseless these oversights are. This is fixable stuff! Even the stuff that looks really hard like EIS'ing the double-track swamp embankment, because they've got the legal precedent (Greenbush) in their favor. Nobody at MassDOT has taken those reins because for 20 years of stupidity the focus has all been arse-end-up.
Anyway, to the original topic: see how Hyde Park gets lost in the shitstorm? Now, I don't know why the T put in for the 'squished' platform in Amtrak's NEC Infrastructure Improvements Master Plan when it had to account for modifications under an Amtrak-led quad-tracking effort. Perhaps there's some sort of constriction that's not going to make it easy to keep side platforms. But at any rate the future service levels are pretty bleak as they'll crater further when branch service gets relocated elsewhere and the need to crossover and back limits available slots capable of serving the rebuilt platform. The one-seat ride to Back Bay now doesn't look too enticing when it only happens once an hour or worse.
Now, alternately if HP is just in a bad space with no path forward to sustainable service levels, there is the option to refurb and reopen the NEC Readville platforms. Readville would not be a traffic clog because 4 tracks can go through the same station footprint as today while retaining the two-side setup that spares any need to cross over in front of another train's path. While the removal of Franklin trains to the Fairmount Line would eliminate the only schedule that DOES have to cross over anywhere past Ruggles. And, if shifted slightly north centered around the Milton St. overpass Readville can even take a configuration >4 tracks (probably not necessary in the real world, but indicative of why they still hold that station in maintenance mode for future consideration). So if HP just can't take the traffic, mitigation can be more kitchen-sink than just stuffing all trains and buses at Fairmount and calling it a day. A Readville superstation can pick up some of the slack, because more schedules could pick up that stop without getting in each other's way. Food for thought, because the solves for HP aren't easy and there is no way to make everyone happy.
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Why do you need to move the inbound track behind the station building? And how are you going to do that without severing Beaumont St and almost certainly having to demolish several of the houses on it?
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Hi All - am new to the board after 8 agonizing months of waiting!
Curious how would the riverside DMU/EMU service plug into the existing line? Would we need new RER platforms at Riverside? How would that facilitate a Worcester CR to Riverside EMU express-to-local transfer?
Equilibria
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In that case it wouldn't. Riverside isn't a current stop on the Worcester Line, and the station for RER service would be down a side track, essentially butting up to the Green Line platforms. There would be a transfer within the station from Green to RER, but not from RER to Commuter Rail. That transfer might be at Auburndale, or it might not exist at all if there isn't demand for it and loco-pulled Commuter Rail skips all the stops between Wellesley Farms and Boston Landing.
Hypothetically, would this issue be offset by Indigo esque headways and the OL coming from Back Bay/Forest Hills to hit those areas? Obviously it makes 0 sense for them to blow by these stops only for commuters to backtrack towards them, but is there a # of riders lost (or annoyed/screwed over) that would be an acceptable trade off for shaving a few minutes off the schedule?
Given their apparent goal of establishing some level of service, no matter how shortsighted or seemingly half-assed, without electrification it makes sense for them to shorten travel times to draw in at least a base level of ridership.